


I THINK I SAW YOU IN MY SLEEP

by lesbianbirds



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Dancing, F/M, Kinda?, uhhh what to tag this!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29428329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianbirds/pseuds/lesbianbirds
Summary: When Tim dreams of Sasha these days it isn’t her face. He thinks he’s got the warm of her hands right though, the elegance of her dancing even when she tried on his feet.or; Tim and Sasha dance and make promises they can’t keep.
Relationships: Sasha James & Tim Stoker, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Kudos: 8
Collections: TMA Valentine's Exchange 2021





	I THINK I SAW YOU IN MY SLEEP

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for my betas, ajkal and hec, who made this coherent (and all in the same tense!). and, of course, mercury, my assignment for the tma valentine’s exchange and the person who gave me this great prompt - thank you, and i hope you have/had a great valentine’s day!
> 
> title from such small hands by la dispute, which i would recommend listening to while you read this!

“C’mon, dance with me,” he said, flaring his eyes wider in a mock-pleading look, hands clasped. It was a performance of a sort, though Tim had been in that mood all night, all showy gestures and too-wide grins. It felt strained, like there was something in his chest pushing to get out. 

He didn’t tend to clasp his hands much anymore, didn’t tend to pray. Issues with authority, y’see. Something to do with the dead brother and the worms that have started to infest the place and that utter conviction he had that anything that’s bigger and greater wanted him dead.  


It’s hard to see Gd in gravestones and ugly stories.

Tim didn’t want to think about it too much. 

“Do you have music?” Sasha asked, drifting around his apartment like she was looking for some dark, hidden secret. Or maybe just a stereo. Tim didn’t need to get twitchy about having her in his home, she was his best friend, his safe harbour. 

It still felt weird, to have her move around the crappy sofa and crappy chairs of his two-room apartment, the sleeves of her yellow jumper pushed up to her elbows to reveal a soft white shirt. 

(Both long-sleeved. Sasha gets cold easily.)

He was good at fear though. Got it down pat, could write essays on it; first, let it consume, then hinge your entire being on revenge you’ll never get for the ghost of a brother that you’ve tied to your ankle. 

“Of course I have music! I have music coming out of my ears,” Tim said, stumbling slightly as he rushed to connect his crappy stereo to his phone. Sasha leant back as he did, a soft smile on her face. He got the odd sense that she was trying to memorise him, so he studied her right back; the bright lipstick, the way she’d pinned up her braids, the warmth of her hand when she reached up and pulled him into a dance. 

She’d painted her nails in that messy way of hers today, blue and purple and pink, the same colours Tim had worn since he was twenty and getting used to his skin. Danny had painted his nails once, shaky and uneven, broad strokes that had stained his nail beds and made him laugh until his stomach ached. 

Tim didn’t want to think about it. 

Sasha had worn sparkly eyeshadow out to the club they went to, but Tim had tried to kiss her eyelids anyway as he swayed back and forth with her on the living room floor of his old, empty apartment. She laughed, of course, pressed a kiss to his hair and spun him around to the tune of some orchestral music he couldn’t remember the name of. 

For a few minutes they were spinning and laughing, hands clasped on hips and shoulders in the struggle to keep their balance. Mostly Sasha just spun, staggering a little as she did, laughing giddily.

She’d wanted to do ballet as a kid, he knew, but her parents hadn’t approved. 

She was still laughing when she grabbed onto Tim for stability again, still smiling that soft smile when she tilted her head up for a kiss. They’d never named this thing between them, other in terms of it being strictly _not_ , but Tim loved her, and that’s all he really cared about.  


It wasn’t romance, because Sasha had never really felt  _ that,  _ and Tim’s feelings - of that sort anyway - had long since faded. Instead they had a nice friends-with-benefits type thing, firmly in won’t-they.

But her toothpaste was in his bathroom and they both liked their coffee so sugary that it hurts their teeth. It wasn’t enough, because it was her, and he loved her, and it had been perfect. 

Tim always wanted to cradle her face, to study the line of her jaw, the curve of her nose, the scattering of acne on her chin and forehead. He wanted to press his fingers to the place where her pulse beat steady, like that would anchor her to him.  


Sasha had a tendency to go spiralling off, to go looking for places where she was wanted, where things are so terribly human and so terribly larger-than loomed.

There was still that buzzing in his fingertips, in a tight ball at the base of throat, in the static that clouds his mind. There was something in him sending off warning bells, telling him Sasha is hiding something, is hiding something under her skin.

But that had always been true. Sasha dug up other people’s secrets and clutched her own so close to her chest that they had grown into her ribs and wrapped around her heart. Tim recognised that, just a little, that itch to dig and dig until the world makes sense, until you could label the moving parts of what hurt you.

There were shelves of books on Robert Smirke in his bedroom, tucked behind trashy romances and all the standard sort of nonsense that occult researchers tend to have. Most of it was the sort of thing Jon would turn his nose up at, that snob. 

“Hey, Sasha?” Tim said quietly, still half-swaying, to a different song now, so upbeat it made the music seem out of place, “I’m…”

“About to say something stupid?” Sasha asked, and when she smiled Tim could see a scar on the corner of her lips. He didn’t know if she got in a childhood accident or from biting off more than she could chew, from being too curious, from being too-

Tim had always loved people who were a bit too big for their skin, who have been looking for something greater for as long as they could think to. It was a terrible habit of his. “Promise me something? Don’t go looking at things you shouldn’t want to see.”

Sasha looked at him closely, dark eyes focused on him so completely he feels caught up, feels trapped and seen and loved. “Promise me you’ll find something beautiful to live for?”

She’d once told him to stop carrying around ghosts like he was planning to walk into the ocean with them still sticking to his skin. He’d told her that he’s going to die in something grand and heroic.

_ That’s the problem  _ she’d said  _ You think suicide is prettier as revenge.  _

(He’d wanted to tell her that the inevitability of his death had been built into his bones since he’d seen his brother become something that wasn’t him. He just wanted to make his death something useful, something that would settle that debt he had.) 

“I promise,” he told her with all the sincerity he could muster. 

“Then so do I,” Sasha said, and changed the music. Tim wonders if she’d even bothered with crossing her fingers behind her back.

He had. 

They’ll drink tea (herbal, because Sasha was banned from caffeine this late) while Sasha talked about the Twilight People project, her fingers beating an absent pattern on the table as he rambled about a book on the history of typewriters he’d read recently. 

It was nice. It wouldn’t last. 

(“Hey, did you ever do some kind of dance?” He asks his coworker, bandaged hands moving slowly from the places where something had burrowed in. Sasha James, archival assistant, immaculate with her white teeth, nails painted neatly with clear polish. She seems the type who would dance, he thinks, though that tight professionalism she has seems to go against that.

Sasha gives him a look that makes him feel small. “Never took to it.”

There’s a number of assumptions he makes about his coworker. He’s starting to feel guilty about it, all those questions about eyeshadow and music and oddly, what brand of toothpaste she uses.

It’s weird, but Tim has a lot going on. He doesn’t have time for that jagged edge, that bit of him that feels like there’s something missing, something he is mourning that he can’t even  _ remember _ . It makes him afraid, sometimes, that there’s something so fundamentally hidden, something he just can’t reach. Like there’s that one last thread, and it hurts.

Sasha makes him coffee with too little sugar. He thanks her and doesn’t think of-

Is there a polite way to tell someone they’ve changed?) 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! come talk to me at @lesbianbirds on tumblr if you’re in the mood to chat about the tragedy of timsasha.


End file.
